Blockchain Papers

Carla Reyes

No abstract is available for this record.

Saurav Chakraborty, Kaushik Dutta, Don Berndt

No abstract is available for this record.

Björn Tackmann

No abstract is available for this record.

Dominique Guégan

In this document, we introduce some thinkings relative to the concept of blockchain, how it works and what are the issues for the banking system. Thus, first we recall what cryptography is, then we introduce the concept of blockchain as a protocol for transmitting information in a secure way, distinguishing two possible approaches: the decentralized public approach and the centralized private approach. The notion of cryptocurrency is introduced and two examples of applications of the public blockchains that are the bitcoin and the etherium are provided

Nadina Lauren Anderson

This dissertation investigates patterns of financial exchange in Ukrainian couples. While previous studies of money management focus on the physical organization of money in the home—e.g. pooled, independent, partially pooled—I focus on the meaning of money in exchange and explore how patterns of exchange become legitimized in the home. Drawing on data from 110 in-depth interviews with married and cohabiting individuals, I advance a theory of gendered money and demonstrate how couples give special symbolic meaning to men’s money in domestic exchanges. Unlike earlier perspectives on gender and money such as resource theories and gender performance, this framework acknowledges money as a prop and tool that couples use to construct gender boundaries and signal normalcy in the marital relationship. Integrating concepts from economic sociology with Hochschild’s insights on the symbolism of domestic labor, I find that Ukrainians use money as a token and symbol of value, not as a commodity with which to obtain desired outcomes. By spending men’s money on "necessary" items and avoiding accessing women’s money in the household, couples construct men’s money as both visible and valuable while rendering women’s money non-fungible. Partners adopt the financial practices that feel comfortable and gender-appropriate, even when women earn more than their husbands. Building on this framework of gendered money, I problematize the concept of a gender "ideology" by arguing that gender beliefs do not always drive financial practices in ways anticipated by gender scholars. Using Swidler's toolkit theory of culture to better understand the duality of gender beliefs and gender structures, I argue that not all gender beliefs can be conceptualized as "ideological." I explore how many of my respondents were inconsistent in the ways they discussed gender and fairness in the home. These inconsistencies provide evidence that individuals can be highly flexible in the ways they legitimize their domestic exchanges. This flexibility creates dilemmas for individuals who desire to change their strategies of action over time. Specifically, I give examples of women’s thwarted desires—respondents who wanted to align their practices with their beliefs but could not due to the lack of cooperation from their partner. I conclude that practices need not always match articulated beliefs; moreover, particular patterns of exchange are culturally entrenched and difficult to displace. Lastly, I analyze how money and labor are symbolically exchanged in the home. I argue that power asymmetries occur when one partner must exert more labor to engage in an otherwise “equal” exchange with their partner.

Ran Canetti, Amit Lichtenberg

The modeling of trapdoor permutations has evolved over the years. Indeed, finding an appropriate abstraction that bridges between the existing candidate constructions and the needs of applications has proved to be challenging. In particular, the notions of certifying permutations (Bellare and Yung, 96), enhanced and doubly enhanced trapdoor permutations (Goldreich, 04, 08, 11, Goldreich and Rothblum, 13) were added to bridge the gap between the modeling of trapdoor permutations and needs of applications. We identify an additional gap in the current abstraction of trapdoor permutations: Previous works implicitly assumed that it is easy to recognize elements in the domain, as well as uniformly sample from it, even for illegitimate function indices. We demonstrate this gap by using the (Bitansky-Paneth-Wichs, 16) doubly-enhanced trapdoor permutation family to instantiate the Feige-Lapidot-Shamir (FLS) paradigm for constructing non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) protocols, and show that the resulting proof system is unsound. To close the gap, we propose a general notion of certifiably injective doubly enhanced trapdoor functions (DECITDFs), which provides a way of certifying that a given key defines an injective function over the domain defined by it, even when that domain is not efficiently recognizable and sampleable. We show that DECITDFs suffice for instantiating the FLS paradigm; more generally, we argue that certifiable injectivity is needed whenever the generation process of the function is not trusted. We then show two very different ways to construct DECITDFs: One is via the traditional method of RSA/Rabin with the Bellare-Yung certification mechanism, and the other using indistinguishability obfuscation and injective pseudorandom generators. In particular the latter is the first candidate injective trapdoor function, from assumptions other than factoring, that suffices for the FLS paradigm. Finally we observe that a similar gap appears also in other paths proposed in the literature for instantiating the FLS paradigm, specifically via verifiable pseudorandom generators and verifiable pseudorandom functions. Closing the gap there can be done in similar ways to the ones proposed here.

Alexandre Laurin, Kevin Milligan

No abstract is available for this record.

Wenming Xu

No abstract is available for this record.

Theodore Koutroukis

No abstract is available for this record.

Taotao Li, Parhat Abla, Ming‐Sheng Wang, Qianwen Wei

No abstract is available for this record.

Christian Janze, Ilya Gvozdevskiy

This exploratory study investigates drivers of the competition between cryptocurrency exchanges. We specifically examine the impact of the market as well as the community on two distinct types of competition - the competition for trading frequency and the competition for trading quantity. In our empirical analysis, we draw on a comprehensive data sample compiled from three data sources. The data includes 24 Bitcoin-fiat currency pairs traded on 79 cryptocurrency exchanges, 71,516 associated posts extracted from a corpus of 2.13bn Reddit posts and Wikipedia search data. We find that the competition for trading frequency is driven by both the market as well as the community whereas the competition for trading quantity is driven solely by the market. We contribute to theory and practice by providing a first understanding of drivers of the competition of cryptocurrency exchanges. In addition, we introduce a new competition measure that is based on the trading frequency.

Kurki, Marleena

The purpose of this study was to describe social movement meeting organization and to increase the understanding of organized spaces for collective action. This paper contributes to several research streams. Firstly, this study advances a novel research stream conceptualizing social movements as spaces, and particularly as open rather than isolated spaces. Secondly, it raises meetings into the focal point of organizing and offers a multisided examination of meeting organization instead of limiting structure under one label such as network or formal organization. Thirdly, by focusing on organizing based on multiple logics and partial organization this study brings forward the understanding of organizing in the contemporary society as well as organization located in the outskirts of formal organizations. Fourthly, by making a distinction between organizing and mobilizing, this study develops the understanding of how movements can serve as a resource for individual actors and their goals. Finally, the case provides a rare example of a movement born around a nascent digital innovation with possibly considerable impact on society. The research was carried out as a descriptive case study focusing on the meetings of Helsinki Ethereum Meetup, which is a meeting-based organization set up around a nascent blockchain platform, Ethereum. The primary data consisted of eight interviews with the meetup participants. In addition, the case was complemented by an analysis of the group’s social media accounts and membership data retrieved from meetup.com, through which the group was facilitated. The data was analyzed utilizing a dual approach deploying both open coding and theory-based coding techniques. Meetings and their organization were analyzed from three perspectives: a network, an institution and an organization. Furthermore, the case analysis included identifying the ideological, business and political context of the case and the meetup group’s relations to other groups in the field of blockchain technologies. The results of the analysis indicate that the meetings can be described as a hybrid of a norm-based institution, a network hub and a partial organization with less than all elements of a formal organization. In practice, all three perspectives are linked to each other and together complement each other to form one entity. However, this study implies that the specific logics can be regarded as analytically separate to arrive at a more pronounced multilevel analysis of meeting organizing. In addition, the case organization was found to be an example of a pioneer group in its own field being the first and only meetup devoted to Ethereum in Finland at the time of the study. Furthermore, the settings and the organization of the meetup were possibly linked to the group’s position in its field and the nascent developmental state of Ethereum.

Mónika Gál, Anna Pyć

No abstract is available for this record.

Kevin Batteh

Batteh explained the importance of Bitcoin, a form of digital currency that is created through the internet and used as a payment system on the internet. He noted that there has been great fluctuation in the value of bitcoin. Recently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) advised that U.S. federal securities law may apply to the issuance and trading of bitcoins and crypto currencies. A summary of the event is available here.

Wenyao Zhou, Quanfang Xiao

As a new Internet technology, Block chain is highly concerned because of its unique advantages in distributed ledger. Based on the theory of event approach accounting, this paper subdivides the accounting recognition into two processes, and explores the application of the Block chain in the processes. With the application of Block chain, it is possible to make accounting recognition multidimensional and achieve the fundamental recognition criteria.

Marc Pilkington, Jong‐Hyouk Lee

In this article, we analyze the winds of change currently blowing on the booming multi-billion dollar global consumer electronics industry. The revolutionary impact of blockchain technology on supply chain management is discussed as well as potential use cases for the consumer electronics industry. The pivotal role played by the IoT (Internet of Things) industry segment is highlighted. Finally, we conclude by stating that blockchain technology has the power to make the world a more transparent, safer and honest place.

Charanjit S. Jutla, Arnab Roy

No abstract is available for this record.

Fabrice Benhamouda, Houda Ferradi, Rémi Géraud, David Naccache

No abstract is available for this record.

Wided Boubakri, Walid Abdallah, Noureddine Boudriga

No abstract is available for this record.

Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova

Much American electoral and policy debate now centers on how best to reignite the nation’s economic dynamism and rebuild its competitive strength. Any such undertaking presents an extraordinary challenge, demanding a correspondingly extraordinary institutional response. This Article proposes precisely such a response. It designs and advocates a new public instrumentality--a National Investment Authority (“NIA”)--charged with the critical task of devising and implementing a comprehensive long-term development strategy for the United States.Patterned in part after the New Deal-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation, in part after modern sovereign wealth funds, and in part after private equity and venture capital firms, the NIA is an inherently hybrid, public-private entity that combines the unique strengths of public instrumentalities--their vast scale, lengthy investment horizons, and explicit backing by the public’s full faith and credit--with the micro-informational advantages of private market actors. By creatively adapting familiar tools of financial and legal engineering, the NIA overcomes obstacles that ordinarily impede or discourage private investment in critically necessary and even transformative public infrastructure goods. By channeling presently speculative private capital back into the real economy, moreover, the NIA plays an important role in enhancing the resilience and stability of the U.S. and global financial systems.The Article makes original contributions not only to contemporary policy debates over how to revive America’s productive prowess and bring its financial system back into the service of the real economy, but also to current theoretical understandings of “public goods,” “market failures,” and how to provide or address them. It offers an account of what it calls “collective goods”--a broader category than orthodox public goods--as solutions to collective action problems that pervade decentralized markets, hence as goods that can be supplied only through exercises of collective agency. Our NIA proposal operationalizes this theoretical insight by elaborating a specific institutional form that such collective agency can take.

Jan Andries Lombard

Blockchain technology has received a disproportionate share of technology news reporting in recent years. As the database technology that solves the double-transaction problem for cryptocurrencies, blockchain has conventionalised digital ledger technology thinking and is envisaged to represent the future of financial platforms. Smart contract technology, the blockchain containers for processes and rules, is positioned to expedite automation in the post-trade infrastructure of financial systems.
\nFintech disruptors discern blockchainÕs potential as a mechanism for disintermediation of the insurance value chain as an opportunity for innovation. Industry counter-measures to this threat include coalitions of financial institutions to evaluate potentially disruptive technologies. The fundamental questions facing the insurance industry are the end-consumerÕs trusting beliefs and propensity to use these emerging technologies in policy servicing systems.
\nWe harness technology adoption theories, trust in technology research and the task-technology fit model to measure policyholder perceptions of blockchain among consumers in the life insurance industry. Responses from a sample of life insurance policyholders (n = 199) were used to measure concepts from three IS adoption theories. Our research finds evidence of policyholder trust in the reliability of blockchain technology, an understanding of the benefits of the technology and a willingness for it to be used in policy servicing.

Camilla Law, Marja Vahlqvist

Bitcoin has gained more recognition than ever before, and the interest in cryptocurrencies seems to grow exponentially. Without any central government regulating Bitcoin, a global user group has adopted this new technology, which is designed to be used as a currency for trading without banks. Empirical studies focus on revealing the true characteristic of cryptocurrencies. Are they a currency, an asset or something else? This paper explores the potential of Bitcoin as a financial asset when used for hedging and portfolio diversification. A regression analysis will be performed to analyse if Bitcoin can be used as a hedge against OMXS30. This analysis yields insignificant values, which leads to a complication in the conclusion. The result imply that Bitcoin is an inadequate hedge, but may possess diversification properties. Studying Bitcoin in relation to OMXS30, Dow Jones, Nikkei 225, Gold and Oil results in correlation values close to zero. By using the mean-variance optimization method, two portfolios are created, one including and one excluding Bitcoin. We show that by including Bitcoin in the portfolio the risk can be decreased on a given return rate. Considering the low and insignificant correlation values with other assets and the better riskreturn ratio when Bitcoin is included in a portfolio, we conclude that Bitcoin can be a suitable diversification tool.

Jason Zweig

No abstract is available for this record.

Meixing Dai, Moïse Sidiropoulos

Le bitcoin attire de plus en plus l'attention des spéculateurs, des consommateurs et des sites marchands, et augmente rapidement en capitalisation. Les autorités de régulation sont plus que jamais préoccupées par la façon dont il doit être traité du point de vue économique. Est-il une monnaie, une chaîne de Ponzi ou un actif financier très spéculatif ? Selon les réponses données à cette question, les réactions des autorités seront très différentes.